A Real Alternative to War With Islam

According to Brian Sussman, one of my favorite talk radio hosts (KSFO, 640 AM, San Francisco), the United States is sitting on more oil than all the Middle East countries combined. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but it is clear we have tremendous, untapped reserves. The Democrats are doing everything they can to ensure those reserves never enter our gas tanks.

We are in an odd situation here. The western nations buy billions of dollars of oil from Muslim countries who hate our guts and want to kill us. We ship untold wealth to them, enabling them to build armies, weapons and nuclear power plants and ultimately, nuclear weapons to use against us and Israel. Iran is threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, cutting off 20% of the world's daily oil production. No doubt they will use this threat to deter intervention when they finally attack Israel. Our dependence on Middle Eastern oil has made us into economic hostages and ensured the next war, should Iran make good on its threats.

If we could greatly reduce this wealth transfer to Muslim nations, we could defund their evil plans. We wouldn't have to fight these people. We could just starve them economically and isolate them so that they could not harm us.

Achieving energy independence would be the greatest plan we could have for preserving the peace. Of course it would have to include greatly restricting immigration from Muslim nations. We were attacked on 9/11 by Muslim immigrants who used our hospitality against us. We need to curtail both the internal threat as well as the external, and we need to be realistic and not idealistic about the nature of our enemy. If we can't win their hearts and minds, then we should concentrate on stopping their oil revenue and preventing new opportunities for domestic terrorism.

We need an effort comparable to the Marshall Plan to build new oil refineries, fund oil exploration on our own continent and off our own coast lines, and build new nuclear power plants. Solar and wind energy could add to the effort, but only as supplementary sources. We are not going to replace our energy needs with windmills. Any viable alternative energy sources are probably a century or more in the future. We don't need any more asinine pollyanna wishful thinking about switch grass, methanol or solar panels.

The Democrats' attitude towards energy independence is strange and unworkable. Bring up the subject and they start talking about "renewal energy sources" and massive funding of research in those areas. Whether this would produce any significant sources of alternative energy is highly doubtful, at least in our lifetimes. I almost get the impression that the Democrats are either dangerously naive or intent on destroying our economy, or that they enjoy seeing Americans suffer. They simply do not live in the real world.

McCain could exploit this very real problem by campaigning for increasing domestic energy sources and blaming our high prices, rightfully, on the Democrats. He could win with such a strategy; but will he use it? Probably not. McCain seems to have razor sharp instincts for how to lose this election.